President Barack Obama has made it so clear that he intends to double the amount of renewable energy produced in the U.S. that environmentalists dubbed his trillion-dollar “stimulus” package the “Green New Deal.” So why does it contain a fraction of what’s needed to build the new “super grid” that is absolutely essential to move electric power – including that generated by all those new wind and solar sources – to places where it’s needed most?

Experts estimate that it will cost anywhere between $50 and $75 billion to add a 21,000-mile, high-voltage overlay to the existing power grid, which is dangerously close to capacity and increasingly vulnerable to devastating terrorist attacks. But instead of making the electrical equivalent of the interstate highway system a top national priority, the conference committee stimulus bill contains just $11 billion for this purpose – even though building the super grid would create 238,000 new jobs and provide vital capacity, to say nothing of protecting national security.